In the Slammer Ch. 05

[Hector has been sentenced to four months in the slammer, but by mistake he's been sent to the Women's Facility. He shares a cell with Dolores. Like all the other inmates, they wear work uniforms during the day, but are kept naked at night. He's been trying to choose between Dolores and Rachel Ramirez, whom he's been banging in the storage room every Tuesday afternoon. ]

---

Dolores and I were waiting for the cell door to open. Things had calmed down since our fight. We were still sleeping in separate bunks, but at least we were being civil to each other.

"You busy tonight?" I asked her. It was a nonsensical question. Both of us knew exactly what the other would be doing every minute of the day.

"I've got tickets to a play," I said. "It's supposed to be pretty good. I was kind of hoping you might like to go. Maybe we can stop off for a bite first. You like Italian?"

She was looking at me, trying to figure out my angle.

"I'm going to ask the warden lady if she'll let us borrow the limo."

She made an exasperated face and turned away, no longer willing to waste her time. Maybe this wasn't the right approach. When Dolores tunes you out, you might as well be talking to a barn door.

"Look, Dolores, I hate this not talking. I hate this you-on-your-bunk, me-on-my-bunk, ignoring each other. So I thought, maybe if we got out of this cell for a bit, you know, went out on a date, had a little fun, maybe we could get back a little toward the way we used to be."

"You're asking me on a date?"

"A pretend one, at least. The best I can do under the circumstances. What do you say?"

"I don't go out on dates with guys who are seeing other girls."

"Rachel, you mean. That's over. We broke up."

"Yeah? When did that happen?"

"Um, as we speak. I just haven't told her yet."

"Yeah. Right." She turned away again, this time for good.

---

I had meant to tell Rachel the day before. But I hadn't done it. Then I meant to tell her at breakfast. But I didn't tell her then either. Then I meant to tell her before we went into the store room. But I didn't. At least I wasn't going to fuck her in the store room. But I did.

So I told her after that. While we were cuddling on the blankets. I ran my fingers down her thigh and told her that she was the hottest, most beautiful, most exciting woman I'd ever been with, but that there was somebody else. I didn't want to hurt her, I'd always remember the times we'd shared, but it would be better if we . . .

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," she said, "and then I say, 'If I can't have you, neither can she,' and I pull out my gun and shoot you." She settled herself more comfortably into my arms. "No, wait. I put my hand on my bosom and say, 'If I can't have you, what's the point of living?' and I pull out my gun and shoot myself."

She stroked my arm that was stroking her thigh. "I get it, OK? Far be it from me to stand in the way of true love. I've been a pretty nasty little bitch to steal you away from your sweetie pie. But put yourself in my shoes. It's not every day a guy comes swaggering into the shower room, all bare chested and handsome, with his cute little pecker all slicked back and shy like the new kid on the first day of school. What's a girl supposed to do? I couldn't help myself. It wasn't anything personal."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," I said, snuggling a little closer. "Nothing personal. Just kicks. Find 'em, fuck 'em---how does it go?---feel 'em, forget 'em. That's my motto."

I leaned over and kissed her softly on the lips. The pile of blankets was barely long enough to get our hips and shoulders on at the same time, but somehow we managed to nestle together pretty cozily.

"Listen, Sensei," I said, after a while, "can I ask you a favor? Seriously. When you get to be a high-rolling big-shot lawyer tycoon, running your corporate empire and all, if I should happen to come knocking on your door some day, with holes in my pockets and patches on my shoes, do you think you could try to find me a job in one of your factories? I'm a pretty good cone counter when it comes down to it."

"Sure," she said, "cone counter, vice president, whatever you want. One thing though. Seriously. That Nobel Prize money of ours might take a while to come through. In the meantime, if you should ever need a baby sitter , , ,"

We were holding hands, our fingers intertwined. I gave her fingers a squeeze. "Godmothers go on speed dial. You know that."

---

I didn't tell anybody. I can't imagine that Rachel did either. But by the following afternoon, everybody already sensed a rearrangement in the force. The next morning at breakfast, when Rachel walked by with her tray of oatmeal and her curt "Lover Boy," just like she always did, Dolores was watching closely, and Annie was watching Dolores, and Black Betty was watching the two of them. And I don't know what it was, some little quiver in Rachel's voice or some little hitch in my nodded reply, but Black Betty turned to Misha, and just like that everybody knew for sure. So that when the word spread around later that day that Rachel's lieutenant was back on inventory duty, it was hardly news at all.

Dolores was a little shy when we got back to our cell that evening.

"Look, I don't know why I got so mad."

"I deserved it."

"I shouldn't have gotten so angry."

"It doesn't matter. I shouldn't have been such a jerk."

"You weren't. I was just afraid that . . ."

"I know. And I just assumed that . . ."

"I know, and I understand. It's just that . . ."

"I know. But what really matters is . . ."

"Yeah, exactly. So do you think we could . . ."

"Yeah, I think we could."

"Yeah. So do I."

I put my arms around her and she put her arms around me, and even though we were both naked, and even though she was a virgin, and even though we were both ostensibly criminals, I hugged her as if she were my dearest dearest dearest, and she hugged me back just the same.

But only for a moment. Such a frank exchange of affection was still a little awkward for us, and we let each other go again.

"Um," I said, "do you want to come down and reflect a while?"

"Do you want to come up instead? It's nice out the window."

So we climbed up onto the top bunk and we scooted down and put our feet on the railing, and we exchanged all the gossip and observations and rambling thoughts and speculations that we had bottled up over the last few days. We let our hips touch and our thighs touch and I put my arm around her shoulders and she rested her head on it---it was just more comfortable that way, such tight quarters and all.

When our bottles had emptied we just lay there for a while watching the sky grow darker. "Do you still want to go out on that pretend date some time?" she asked. She asked in her shy voice, a voice I'd heard only once or twice before in all the time we'd been together.

The pretend date had mostly just been a gambit to get us talking again, but it seemed to have struck some kind of chord with her. Maybe there was something to it. Maybe we both wanted more than just getting back to the way things used to be. Maybe she wanted to go to plays and Italian restaurants as much as I wanted to take her. Well, if there was one lesson I'd taken to heart in the slammer, it was Dolores's golden rule: do on the inside as you would do on the outside.

"You busy tomorrow?" I asked.

"Nobody ever asked me out on a date before."

"Come on!"

"I mean, I've done things with guys. But it was always more just hanging out. Not a real date."

"Well then . . ."

She turned on her side to face me. "Should we get dressed up?"

"Absolutely."

"It will have to be pretend clothes, but still . . ."

I turned on my side to face her. "Easier on the budget that way, anyway."

"Will it be a fancy restaurant?"

"Luigi's. On East 14th. Not real fancy, but decent enough."

"I know just what I'm going to wear."

"They have the best eggplant parmesan."

"Eggplant! I'm going to have steak."

Although we were facing each other, she was looking off into tomorrow. Her eyes made little darting movements as she considered each possibility. I was lying close enough that the waves of her anticipation washed all over me, all persimmon colored and sparkly. I could feel myself falling under their sway.

"I'll pick you up at seven o'clock on the dot."

I could have climbed back down to the bottom bunk, but I didn't. We just slept side-by-side, sharing a blanket, the way we used to.

---

"Adonis!"

"Mabel!" I struck a couple of of my best beefcake poses.

"Um, um! Sugar, if we could bottle that we could make ourselves a million dollars."

I took my packet of clothes, leaned across the counter, and gave her a kiss on the cheek. She touched her face and gave me an exaggerated look of surprise.

"You can keep the money," I winked. "Just let me see your pretty smile every morning."

She giggled. "You go on now!"

---

That day they had us picking up litter along the highway. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. I must have picked up five bags full. It made me happy to look back and see how nice my stretch looked when I was done. At least I was rehabilitating something.

That evening our cell door buzzed shut at seven o'clock on the dot.

"Ready?" I asked.

Dolores gave her hips a little twist, showing off her pretend outfit. She smiled shyly, awaiting my complement. We'd come to take each other's nakedness in the cell for granted. But now I couldn't help but pay a bit of extra attention to the pleasant curve of her hip, the soft roundness of her breast, made all the more alluring by the invisibility of her imaginary clothes.

"A pleated skirt," she said. "Kind of an ivory, I guess you'd call it. Don't you love the way it swishes?"

"Ooh la la! And the top?"

She blushed, in her cheeks and in her nipples. "Cashmere," she said, in a reverent tone, as if the word itself told all that needed to be said. I reached out to touch its imaginary softness on her shoulder.

"And how about you?" she asked.

"Trousers. A new shirt. Um, button-down collar, um, stripes, um, gray and light blue."

"Not bad," she assessed.

It turned out that she'd never been to a fancy restaurant before. She'd read an article in one of her magazines about how a girl should conduct herself, but she couldn't remember it all.

"Just stick with me," I assured her. I described the checkered curtains, the way the maitre d' took us to our booth, the table cloth, the silverware, the chianti bottle candles. Luigi's is just a neighborhood place, but I made it sound fancy enough. Dolores loved that I ordered a plate of cheeses and olives as an appetizer. She loved the warm, crusty bread, the sparkling water, the crisp lettuce salad. She knew to order her steak medium rare, and she sampled my eggplant parmesan. She loved it when Luigi and his cousin Tony come out of the kitchen to sing along with some of the old songs on the juke box,

Then we had to hurry down to the theater. I'd gotten a book of plays from Mrs. Carlsen's library. There was a one-act comedy with only two characters: a well-intentioned dreamer of a fellow who wasn't quite as smart as he thought he was, and a girl who came across as scatter brained at first, but who managed to get him to see things her way in the end. It was funny and sweet, and the two of us were still a bit emotional after our spat and our making up. We laughed so much during the funny parts that we could barely make it through our lines. And we blushed so much during the sweet parts that it was all we could do to look at each other.

When the play was over, I asked her "Why don't we go for a little walk? That's what we'd do if we were on a real date."

The cell was long enough to take about three steps between the door and the toilet, then three steps back again. We'd each paced the circuit many times by ourselves, but this was the first time we'd ever done it together. It was a tight fit, but we weren't in any particular hurry. We talked about the play, about the highway, about the latest gossip, about how things might have changed on the outside. We kept on walking long after the lights clicked off.

Finally we came to a stop, as if we'd arrived at her front door. We turned and faced each other.

"I had a really nice time tonight," I said.

"Oh, me too," she said. "It was the nicest date I've ever been on."

I leaned in and kissed her. It was a gentle kiss, a gentle caress of her lips, a gentle taste of her. She wasn't expecting it. For all I knew it was the first time she'd ever been kissed. It was a real kiss, though, not pretend. I didn't want everything about the date to be pretend.

As we drew our lips apart she had her mouth slightly open. I caught a glimpse of the fierce impenetrability she'd armored herself with the first night we were thrown in together. But it was tempered by a bit of the spellbound consideration that came over her in the presence of cocoons and falling stars. We regarded each other for several seconds. I gently let go of her shoulders. She climbed up to the upper bunk. I lay down on the bottom one.

---

Neither of us had ever dated a cellmate before. We spread our pretend dates out a bit, not having them every night, so as to keep them a little more special. One evening I took her to the ballgame. We sat right over the home team dugout, and I described every every stratagem, every look, every trajectory, every expectoration. She took me roller skating, and leaned back dreamily in my arms as we flew around the rink, centimeters from the railing, my neck straining around to chart us a clear course. On date nights we'd go home to our separate bunks because that just seemed more natural But in between we still slept together, like a couple of . . . , well, not like any couple I'd ever heard of. Like Adam and Eve, maybe, before the business with the apple.

Having to date in the nude was pretty strange too. We'd dress up in pretend clothes, but we both knew we could see right through them. I tried to nudge things along, but it was kind of silly trying to pretend to uncover gradually something that was already on full display. Besides, despite her golden rule, it just didn't seem right that anyone should have to have her first time be in a rusty jail cell. So we kept it to kissing and hugging, naked kissing and naked hugging, granted, with all the bodily responses that that entailed, but we didn't go any farther than that.

One evening I was standing at the toilet, ready to start my routine maintenance. I still did it every three or four days to keep myself from making a mess in bed. Always before, Dolores and I had just pretended to ignore each other when I did it. But this time she came and stood beside me. I was going to go ahead and do it anyway, but I couldn't, not with her standing there.

She took a hold of my arm. "Come on," she said. "You don't have to do this anymore." I wasn't so sure. She started pulling. "Come on. I hate that you have to do this. This is the only part about us being locked up together that I don't like."

"But you know what will happen."

"I know I freaked out that one time. But we weren't going together then. Now we are. If it happens now and I'm beside you, it's because that's where I choose to be. OK? Don't do it this way any more. Please?"

She'd never asked me anything with please before. I gave in to her pulling.

"So, um . . .," she said, once we'd gotten ourselves arranged on the top bunk. It was rare for Dolores to be at a loss for words. Usually she either said what was on her mind, or she didn't say anything at all.

"Um . . .," she continued. It must have been a particularly sensitive topic. Nothing to do but just wait for it to arrive.

"What if somebody wanted to live her life a certain way," she said, finally, keeping her eyes directed toward the window to emphasis the hypothetical nature of her speculation, "and she made herself a promise that there would be certain things that she'd never share with anyone, unless she was truly in love with them."

"I can see that."

"And what if she thinks she's truly falling in love with someone. She thinks he's really nice, one of those kind-hearted guys that Mrs. Carlsen is always talking about. And she thinks he likes her.

"But she's in jail, and nothing in jail is ever what it seems, and so she's not sure whether her feelings are true or not. She's afraid that maybe it's all just a mirage, and that when she gets out she'll realize that she's broken her promise."

"Not everything in jail is not what it seems. Maybe she should trust her feelings more."

"They're telling her two different things. They're telling her that she's in love, but they keep reminding her how important her promise is."

"She should listen to both then, I guess. Are there maybe some things she doesn't mind sharing in jail? Maybe she can share things that far now, and wait for the rest until she gets out."

"But what if the guy doesn't want to wait?"

"He's probably not worth waiting for then."

"You don't think he'll just scoff at her promise?"

"Not if it means so much to her. Maybe he never made the same promise himself, not in so many words, but that doesn't mean he doesn't want to live his life a certain way too."

"What if he's already shared certain things with other people? What if he's gotten used to people sharing those things that way?"

"Oh, I don't think he's gotten used to it. Probably his first time sharing was like in the promise anyway, the two of them thinking they were in love, wanting to be in love, actually being in love I guess, even though it turned out to be harder than they thought. And probably the second time, even if it wasn't strictly like in the promise, there was enough affection and tenderness that he hopes she'll understand."

"But when they get out they may never see each other again."

"That's kind of up to the two of them, isn't it?"

---

A couple days later I was helping Hanky with her math worksheet in the day room when they called Dolores out for her evaluation meeting. She was supposed to be getting out in a month, about the same time as me. But when she came back from her meeting you could tell that something was wrong. She wasn't herself in the showers. Annie gave me a look during lineup to make sure I was on it.

As soon as we got into the cell Dolores burst into tears. I took her in my arms.

"They're going to let me out early," she cried.

"That's great!" I said.

"What am I going to do? Where am I going to go?"

"Hey, come on. We'll figure it out."

"What did I ever do to deserve this?"

I rocked her gently. Her nipples were getting cold from her tears.

"I'll rob a bank. Then they'll have to let me back in."

"No good. They'd never put us back together. Come on. We've got to start thinking about making it on the outside."

"What am I supposed to do? Go back with my fucking stepfather?"

"Don't you have any friends you can stay with?"

"They mostly still live at home."

"OK. OK. I've got a friend. She'll put you up for a while. She'll bitch, but she'll do it."

"Your old girlfriend."

"She's all right."

"And what about you?"

"Don't worry about me. I'll be showing up on your doorstep before you even know it."

"In the meantime. They'll put another girl in here with you. You'll be sleeping with her naked every night."

"I'll sleep on the top bunk."

"You'll fall in love with her, just like you fell in love with me."

"Baby, now can you say that? I won't even look at her."

"You'll look at her."

"I won't fall in love with her."

"You fell in love with Rachel."

"I didn't. Not really. I fell in love with you."

"Oh, Baby, I'm just so scared."

I held her tight. I felt a heartbeat pounding in my chest, but I wasn't sure whose heart it was.